


Reach for Fire

by steadfastasthouart



Series: Watford without Watford [2]
Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: M/M, SnowBaz, Watford, no magic here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 12:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3692241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steadfastasthouart/pseuds/steadfastasthouart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the Watford campus under the power of the Insidious Humdrum, the school community busies itself preparing temporary new housing. Simon does a lot of manual labor and feels useless; Penelope mocks him a little and gets some (implied) smooching (not from him) (god); and Baz is mysterious and kind to spiders.</p>
<p>*** Watford and its residents belong to Rainbow Rowell, author of the book <em>Fangirl</em>, in which they first appeared. ***</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Watched

They were never alone.

* * *

The night of the ball, the eighth-years bunked tight as kippers in the boathouse by the river. True to her word, Agatha had set Simon and Baz each up with neat, if meager, bedrolls; one side and the other of an inverted little blue skiff that Simon was pretty sure he'd snuck out for a midnight row back in year three.

Simon had been surprised how hard it was to sleep that night in the boathouse—not because of the hard concrete through his wool blanket, not because he was sleeping in the now-unsalvageable remains of the best suit he'd ever owned, and _not even_ , he had to admit, because the magical world he treasured was being shredded in the claws of a demon of his own making. No, he had trouble sleeping because there was so much breathing all around him, so much twisting and grunting from the four boys packed in to his right, as well as the dozens of others throughout the room, that he couldn't hear, a mere eight feet to his left, the whispering exhales of his roommate.

 _He's my metronome_ , he thought, only a little ashamed at the sappiness. _He keeps me steady._

When Simon had finally got him inside earlier, Baz had practically disintegrated into his own bedroll, so grateful to relinquish the effort of holding himself aloft. He didn't protest as Simon tugged off the fitted black coat and undid the tie, draping both over the keel of the genial little boat, and tucked the rough blanket up to his chin. If there was gratitude or even awareness, it didn't show through Baz's opaque mask of exhaustion.

Simon would have run a reverent thumb along that craggy nose, crawled into the limp arms, let Baz's sleep course through him, but he could feel the acute gazes of the dozens of others who watched curiously, from a respectful distance, as Simon lowered Baz to his bed.

The others didn't know, Simon recalled. They didn't know how Simon and Baz had escaped, nor how they'd been able to get everyone out. Some had been alert enough to recognize that Baz had been the last one to face Occupied Watford, but they didn't know what it was that allowed him to withstand the force that had crushed everyone else to uselessness.

It added to their mystique, Simon supposed. He was pleased to find that the usual campus scuttlebutt about him now seemed to include Baz as well—as if they were co-conspirators, a partnership of rogues, and not as if one of them would have completely destroyed Watford but for the heroic selflessness of the no-longer-entirely-human other.

That _no-longer-entirely-human_ part. That was the part Simon couldn't tell, and the reason the others couldn't know the truth about their rescue.

He had kept Baz outside after, in the nighttime shadows, until he merely looked like a man worked almost to death and no longer like a vampire testing the outer bounds of his self-control.

Who knew what they would say if they found out? Simon didn't at all understand why more people didn't blame him for the Humdrum's existence (“Your puppy-like helplessness,” Penelope teased), and couldn't at all trust that they wouldn't associate bloodthirsty Baz with their Insidious oppressor. (Even his mother, in his first minutes of life, had never thought Baz looked helpless. After all, she'd named him Tyrannus.)

So Simon had stared through the boat in the dark, imagining the rise and fall of that slender chest in its tailored white shirt, wondering what Baz did with his hands as he slept ( _and what do I do with mine?_ ), and thinking with lightheaded fury of the necessities of tomorrow: first thing, they must meet with the professors to take steps against the Humdrum; and second, he and Baz also must, without doubt, find a few minutes to themselves.

* * *

Why on earth couldn't fate have reversed that order of operations?

Well, there hadn't been much of a time window. Professor McCormick had shaken him awake in the first light of morning and dragged him to confer in the very crowded bridgekeeper's hut with a dozen other teachers and senior advisers who acted as the school's leadership council in the absence of the Mage.

There they had determined, all before breakfast, that the crushing-into-the-ground aspect of the Humdrum's influence seemed, thus far, to stop at the moats (“ _Jolly good thing, too, as it's right there,” Professor Boreas had said, never afraid to state the obvious, and pointing to the streaky water out the window_ ) but that the knocking-out-all-magic-as-we-know-it influence's radius extended at least as far as Oxford, which of course meant that the whole of London was out; that without magic, the prudent course was to take the time to recenter and regroup without a lot of brave showboating; and that, finally, as the Humdrum's most obvious target, Simon was to be under constant escort.

Simon trudged back to breakfast in high dudgeon, but at his side, Professor Eccleston didn't notice in the least. She was too busy explaining to him the marvelous complexity of the Humdrum's arrival, which had manifested itself just slowly enough, and with the right sort of pressure, to drive the school's residents from their rooms and out into the grounds, almost like a fire bell, so that it had been the work of only minutes to herd the first- through seventh-years across the bridge to safety in a nightshirted parade. She had overnighted in the laundry with the first-years, who, she said, had enjoyed the whole night as quite a real adventure.

“They felt like right geniuses, they did,” she chuckled, explaining how the kids had dug out candles and electric lights and whatnot. “We oldsters are so accustomed to our little quotidian magics. It goes against our nature to reach for fire instead of a wand.”


	2. Worked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone's always watching.

In a few days' time, the entire operations of the Watford School of Magicks had moved from its hallowed grounds and into the outskirts of town, where the old RAF base, abandoned since the 1950s, was just about serviceable for the school's needs.

Everyone pulled duties in the settling-in. Under the doleful gaze of Professor Chilblains, Simon's crew whitewashed walls in the old officers' mess hall; Professor Desai supervised as they hauled tiny, dusty old mattresses to air on the grass; Professor McCormick kept her unlaughing eyes pegged to Simon as he helped construct hundreds of ancient metal bedframes, which squeaked precariously and would have been fodder for lewd jokes from the other workers had Simon's watcher been any less rigid.

Simon was sick of being watched. As always, the hard work and sweat broke through his depression, made him feel productive and useful in the world, but being under constant supervision kept this from feeling like the grand diversion that it was for so many others.

From afar, he watched Penny and Agatha joke together as they covered missing windowpanes in the barracks huts with plastic sheeting; while the two girls were in Hut 4, Osiris Wallis hefted in a stack of clean linens, and shortly thereafter, Agatha emerged alone. Simon made a note to tease Penny—who was _still_ in there with Osiris fifteen minutes later, when Simon had had to move to another task—whenever he next got her alone.

It was a spring day; the sky was clear, the air buoyant with the promise of warmth ahead. But Simon felt trapped.

* * *

Where was Baz? He hadn't seen him since putting him down to bed three nights before. Simon thought they'd both been assigned to Hut 8, but if Baz had slept there, he'd arrived and departed again during Simon's sleep.

The third morning, Simon finally caught up with Penelope over a breakfast of toast and boiled eggs. (This morning's watcher, Professor Benedict, had opted for a bit of adult time and was ostensibly observing him from where he sat in contemplation of his own egg at the teachers' table.)

After ribbing Penny about Osiris and being rewarded with a riotous blush and—he was surprised and delighted to find—not the titchiest attempt at a denial, he tried to inquire about Baz, but the words stuck in his throat.

He hadn't let himself examine this yet, he realized. All that time working and grunting, wrestling metal legs to frames and lugging bundles, he'd been recalling his insensate joy at his hands on Baz, Baz's hands on him. From the corner of his eye, he'd a few times thought he saw Baz's shadow near a tree or face through a window, but when he looked there was nothing but his own yearning imagination.

So now, when he asked, “Have you seen...” and frogged up, choking a bit on his toast, Penelope might have missed the words, but not the aching undercurrent of raw, unprocessed desire.

She laughed heartily.

“Yeah. He's all over the place, spearheading forays back to the outbuildings at Watford, overseeing communications, bossing people...you know, all that stuff that Pitches were born to do. Why? Are you tired of him watching you yet?”

Automatically, Simon answered, “He's not watching me.”

“Right.” Penelope rolled her eyes and went back to her egg.

“Really.”

“You're telling me you don't see the tall, lurking form leering at you from behind every copse and hedgerow?”

“Gross. No.” But he thought it over, and realized that of course she was right. Of course. That _had_ been Baz he'd seen in all those disappearing moments in the last few days. Penelope knew too. She just sat back and watched with the condescending patience one extends to a far-fetched romantic comedy as the truth dawned on Simon and realization crept pinkly into his cheeks. “Okay. You're right. But he's always gone when I—“

In a tone that suggested that no one should ever have to explain something quite so obvious, she said, with exaggerated languor, “Because he is not quite like us, is he? Perhaps you recall that he _is_ a vampire, Simon.”

“Shh!” he cut her off, horrified. “Don't let anyone hear you!”

“Oh pish. No one can hear me. And the point is, he probably moves almost faster than we can see, when he wants to. He's up to something. I figured you would know what it is.”

“Well, I don't.”

“Me either. But part of it seems to involve sneaking peeks at you.”

Feeling uncomfortably red, Simon focused on his breakfast for a few minutes. “I've never seen him at full speed,” he eventually mused aloud.

“Maybe he's saving it,” Penelope said, with a wink that at any other time would have seemed comical. “You know, for just the right moment.”

Suddenly, Simon blanched. “You don't reckon he's trying to _protect_ me, do you?”

“Like a bodyguard? An heirsman?” She mulled it over. “Could be.”

Had he not been so truly ravenous during these days of labor, Simon would have pushed away the rest of his breakfast uneaten. He could think of nothing more humiliating than the idea that Baz Pitch—who, Simon ardently hoped, dreamed in his bloodsoaked oblivion of Simon's thick, muscled, powerful body—might see him as a weakling in need of constant saving.

He'd already done it once. Maybe he just figured it was his job now.

Gods.

Simon scowled through the rest of his toasts, then reported crabbily back to his work detail, Professor in tow.


	3. Worried

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, a moment. Apple orchard, springtime.

Later that day, trudging past the apple orchards with a dozen others on the way back from a Watford supply run, Simon was sure he could feel eyes— _those_ eyes—watching him. He couldn't see Baz, but he couldn't have felt his presence more plainly if Baz had been poking him with a stick.

Simon had been plodding in glum silence, tired of the solicitous questions from his peers, who all seemed eerily resigned to his imminent martyrdom at the hands of the Insidious Humdrum. _I'm not fucking dying_ , he wanted to scream, but that would have been unbecoming and useless to boot.

Professor Benedict had drifted in front of him again, and was pontificating to an enraptured Elspeth about a few of the finer distinctions between the roles of _ethos_ and _ethics_ in modern medical magic, and Simon figured if he just slowed just a little—there! he'd fall to the back of the group. Then it was the work of an instant to slip through one of openings in the low stone wall that ringed the orchard, drop his parcels, and plunge in amongst the trees.

“ _Baz_ ,” he hissed, as soon as he felt confident he was out of his group's hearing. “ _Baz!_ I know you're here.”

He pushed further through the dense green growth, tiny new fruit smacking like pebbles and spiderwebs lacing across his skin, till he was in the thick of the ancient orchard.

He paused there, calling as loud as he dared, and trying to suppress the rising flood of emotion that had set his eyes sparking.

“Baz!” he whispered again, realizing as the first tears brimmed over that he was scratched and grimy and throat-wringingly alone. He flicked a large spider irritably from his shoulder, idly watching it arc through the air, and nearly shouted with surprise when a pale hand materialized to catch the little creature in the middle of its fall.

Extending backward from the hand, a casual and calm Baz now leaned against a tree's trunk. Although he certainly hadn't been there half a second earlier, he looked perfectly composed ( _as always,_ Simon thought resentfully, admiringly—where was the tremulous, needy Baz he'd seen a few nights ago?), his knit vest snug and smooth over a crisp shirt.

Baz reached up gracefully, and the lucky spider crept onto a verdant branch.

“Is this how you act at your worst, Snow?” His grey eyes flickered with mirth. “You abuse garden spiders and mortify your flesh with the lashings of a thousand fruit trees and cry out for your roommate?”

Simon shook his head, embarrassed and annoyed. He scowled at the ground. He didn't want to talk about whatever it was that had led him to rampage desperately through the orchard just now. Instead, he said, “Penelope says you're watching me.”

It sounded awfully childish when it came out.

Baz cocked an eyebrow. “Does she?”

Simon refused to be deterred. “Are you?”

“Yes.” Looking Simon in the eye, Baz held onto the end of the word for much longer than he needed to; did he know how it drove Simon crazy when he did that? It was like needles under his skin, like electricity. “Do you care?”

“Yeah.” He could feel bright spots burning in his cheeks. “I mean, I guess it matters _why_...”

“Ah.” Baz lifted his chin in that familiar, supercilious way that he must know made his nose and brow appear more majestic and his eyes more fierce to those mere mortals who looked up at him. “I suppose... I suppose you could say that I'm worried about you, Snow.”

Simon felt like he'd been slapped. Hadn't he been the one Baz turned to, not just the other night, but so many times? Hadn't he proven himself, again and again? How dare Baz worry about him?

“Fuck off,” he said. “Don't worry about me. Worry about everyone else, okay? _I'll_ be just fine.”

Baz was still standing there, so long and narrow and sure—a stark charcoal sketch against a landscape of green—and Simon needed to get away. Blindly, he turned and pushed through the trees, back toward the road.

“Snow, stop.” The voice sounded exasperated, almost bored.

He kept moving through the crooked old rows.

Baz was ahead of him, just like that. “ _Stop!_ ”

He didn't.

Finally, Baz grabbed him by the wrist and he snapped to a halt, as much from the crackling reality of _Baz_ as from the force on his wrist.

“You just don't understand, do you?” The look in his eyes, when Simon met them, wasn't bored after all; Simon had been mistaken because this was something he'd never seen from Baz: too open, too accepting—all generosity and compassion. Simon hated how ready he was to melt into it.

“No, I'm pretty sure I understand perfectly,” he spat. “I see how you look at me now. Everyone looks at me and sees weakness. I'm an object of pity, a victim.”

Simon was almost relieved when Baz sneered at him, flashing white teeth. “Snow, this is just pathetic.”

“See? There you go,” Simon wriggled out of his hold, glaring at Baz from a few feet away. “Pathetic. An object of pity. A fucking 'target,' they called me.”

“Simon Oliver _Snow_.” In less time than it had taken his last word to form, Baz had him against a tree, gripped at the wrists and pinned by a forearm across the chest. “You wallowing dunce. They're not afraid that you're the Humdrum's _target_. They're afraid that you're his _spy_.”

* * *

It took a while for the words to sink in.

“They think I'm working for _it_?”

“It _is_ 'insidious.' Everyone knows it's got hooks in you. And with the Mage gone, it was easy for the others to speculate about you—so pure, so clean of heart, so virginal and virtuous—and wonder if the Humdrum's been devouring you from within.”

“It's not!” Simon was appalled and dismayed, not least at that onslaught of blancmange adjectives. “I'm still me! I mean, I'm on our side. I mean, after every fucking thing I've done for the Watford side, you still...”

“Not _I_ ,” Baz interrupted in a murmur, arched eyebrow distractingly near to Simon's face. “I don't believe I mentioned my _own_ suspicions at all.”

“Then why are you spying on me?” Simon demanded, glaring into that green-flecked grey gaze.

Baz rolled his eyes. “Didn't I say? I'm worried about you.” Simon opened his mouth to protest, but Baz's eyes shushed him. “ _Not_ worried that you're a spy, and _not_ worried that we need to protect you from the Humdrum, although it would be lovely if we could. I'm worried you'll lose confidence, Snow. We _need_ you confident.”

“We?” Simon asked, Baz's deep-seated _lovely_ vibrating in an empty chasm of his chest.

Baz chuckled, paused, recalculated. “I.”

A time passed in which the two boys stood alone together in a green sea of trees, separated by inches of breath and one unbroken, uplifting, heart-quickening stare. Then, distantly, Simon heard voices approaching and realized suddenly that all this time he'd had Baz's hands—the hands in his dreams and waking visions—clutching his own body. He looked down at the lean forearm that pinioned him to the tree.

Baz looked down too, as if he, too, had forgotten their proximity.

“I'll let go,” Baz offered, “if you don't flee again.”

“Better not risk it,” Simon grinned, pushing his head forward as far as he could within the constraints of Baz's arms, loving that Baz made him wait for just one excruciating second longer than he needed to before tipping forward—so lightly that you could almost believe he wasn't silently, frantically claiming every fraction of Simon for his own, his alone—to meet his lips.

* * *

Professor Benedict, rather adorably red-cheeked with running and consternation, discovered a similarly flushed Simon Snow, leaned alone and glowing—in what Benedict would later describe in his official council report as “ecstatic reverie”—in the heart of the orchard, against a gnarled apple tree.


End file.
